“Chicago Kinfolk: The Juke Joint Blues” earns Gold for Use of Music Craft (Casting/Performance) and Bronze for Use of Music Innovation
DENVER, CO, UNITED STATES, January 13, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Multimedia artist/director Terry Blade has won two 2026 Clio Music Awards for “Chicago Kinfolk: The Juke Joint Blues.” The original ethnographic blues project created by Blade has been recognized with a Gold Award in Use of Music Craft (Casting/Performance) and a Bronze Award in Use of Music Innovation.
The creative industry recognizes that the Clio Music Awards are widely associated with large-scale creative ecosystems where record labels, agencies, and major production teams typically dominate. Blade’s dual recognition stands out because it reflects an individual creator-led body of work that carried its own concept, research, execution, and presentation from start to finish and still rose to the top of an international jury.
The “Chicago Kinfolk: The Juke Joint Blues” project combines Blade’s music recordings with historical spoken-word recordings of Chicago Blues legends. The Clio award materials show how the project creates direct musical dialogues that draw on historical voices, black queer voices, contemporary folklife themes, and ethnographic field recordings. The final product unites musical expression with cultural preservation.
“These awards land differently when you build the work from the outside,” said Terry Blade. “They recognize the craft, but they also recognize the responsibility. Chicago Kinfolk is about honoring voices, handling history with care, and still making something musically alive right now.”
The Gold Award in Casting/Performance honors the project for using public-domain archival voices as its core performance element, serving as casting throughout the project’s narrative structure. The Bronze Award in Innovation recognizes the underlying approach and methodology, pairing new composition with meticulously researched, curated historical materials to expand how music can function as education, preservation, and public-facing storytelling.
“This is exactly the kind of cultural work Blade Arthouse Media is built to support,” said a spokesperson for Blade Arthouse Media. “Terry’s recognition is not only a major personal milestone. It is proof that ambitious, research-driven art can set new precedent and compete at the highest level without defaulting to the usual mainstream structures, and that Chicago’s black history and cultural record still has new ways to be heard.”
About Terry Blade
Terry Blade is a multimedia artist/director who treats music and sound as testimony. Rooted in the traditions of Black American sound yet unbound by genre, he creates work that preserves memory, confronts identity, and amplifies voices too often left unheard. His multidisciplinary vision has earned recognition on some of the world’s most premier stages, including the Tribeca Festival, where his visual work was celebrated among leading innovators in film and media, and other Academy Award®-qualifying, BAFTA-qualifying, or Canadian Screen Award-qualifying film festivals such as the LA Shorts International Film Festival, the Leeds International Film Festival, the Mill Valley Film Festival, and the Regina International Film Festival and Awards.
About Blade Arthouse Media
Blade Arthouse Media is an independent arts and media imprint supporting cross-disciplinary, purpose-driven creative work at the intersection of music, culture, and story.
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